Being a substitute teacher in so-called "Level 1" schools is to be on the front lines of a disintegrating society. "Level 1" is shorthand for the worst of the worst. If the name makes no sense, perhaps we can assume it was coined by a product of these very schools.
Even a lifetime of living in "Level 1" neighborhoods and having "Level 1" neighbors cannot prepare a person for the reality of inner-city schools in 2010 America. By this I mean that I have lived and worked next to "Level 1" people my whole life, but even that could not prepare me for what I see every day in our public schools.
To be a 31-year old man returning to urban public schools for the first time since attending them in my youth is to be instantly morphed into an 80-year old Republican. I have been meanly and swiftly reduced to waxing reminiscent and nostalgic about a simpler, more civilized time. By which I mean 1993.
The amazing thing is not that students fight, or swear, or show a lack of innate interest in learning. The amazing thing is that these behaviors have been completely mainstreamed. What used to result in immediate suspension now, in the very same schools, barely registers as a disruption.
It used to be that fighting, for example, or calling a teacher a faggot or a bitch or something far, far worse would result in immediate suspension. Now, in the very same schools, this behavior is simply the cost of doing business, an annoyance rather than a red line.
What has changed? Certainly music and movies have become more coarse and explicit. But that is not the fundamental issue. When I was in these schools, the n-word was just as prevalent in rap music as it is today, but it was not a word that was heard spoken in the hallways. Now, it is a word I hear as often as I hear the word "the".
This word, and others equally vulgar, are common currency now. So are all other types of behavior that simply would not have been tolerated in the good old days, if there ever is such a thing.
The fundamental problem is two-fold. Firstly, adults (parents, guardians, and teachers) have tolerated this behavior. It doesn't take a doctorate in child psychology to know that if there is no consequence to calling an adult a bitch-ass motherfucker, then that behavior will occur far more often than it otherwise would.
Secondly, and most importantly, kids today are entirely incapable of dividing their identities. All of us today live atomized lives and are required to assume several different "identities" in any given day. It is possible to be a father, a son, a husband, a teacher, a shopper, a driver, and a friend in the course of a single day, for example.
What today's children lack is any understanding that different identities require different conduct. People my age understand that the language you use around your friends in a casual setting is very different from the language you would use towards your mother, or during a job interview, or when seated in a restaurant.
Those dividing lines are not acknowledged by youth today. To them, there is no sense that school is a different realm from home with an entirely different set of conduct, communication, and behavior. The sullen and hostile glares from students who are told they may not listen to headphones during class attests to this.
One hypothetical I use to (vainly) attempt to illustrate this for students is Jay-Z. When Jay-Z walked into a boardroom to negotiate the purchase of an NBA franchise, do we think he sagged his pants? Do we think he smoked or drank during the meeting? Do we think he referred to his prospective colleagues as "niggas"?
Two things are clear when I ask students to think about that scenario. Firstly, they are intrigued. Secondly, any serious consideration of the merits of the point I raise lasts about 5 seconds.
"Know thyself" is an old adage. In this day and age, however, that can be crippling, especially if the "self" you define yourself as is the "self" you are with no adults around. The costs of defining yourself that way are crippling. What students need to do today is to be able to incorporate different identities. They need to know thyselves.
1 comment:
I have NO idea what it must be like to teach in that environment (I also don't want to know). But I do run across the language issue and have used the exact same analogy with some success, though, as you acknowledge, it's a different environment. Parents send their kids to our school and pay out the ass precisely because we don't tolerate certain things. Or because we live in the past on purpose. However you want to look at it. Still, I make the point of telling them that, yes, teachers use that language, too, and so do their parents, and so do their favorite celebrities. But school and work, etc., are just not the right environments for it. It helps when they see I'm not moralizing or saying certain words are "bad." They're just...inappropriate at certain times in certain places. And being smart about that can go a long way toward getting where you want to go.
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